Irish singer Sinead O’Connor has written a new, English language version of Ireland’s national anthem.
She performed her take on "Amhrán Na Bhfiann" during a concert at Vicars Street in Dublin on Tuesday night and posted the video and lyrics to her Facebook page.
There, the “Nothing Compares 2 U” singer, who recently joined Sinn Fein and called for the party’s leaders to step down, explained that earlier this year she wrote to Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny “to see could we perchance make the lyrics more appropriate for the 21st century and not so war-like, perhaps have a national competition.”
She described the current anthem as “all testosterone and not much estrogen.”
"There are no plans to change it,” she says Kenny wrote back.
O’Connor’s updated version “keeps exactly the same melody as the current one but its words are 99.8 ish % from the 1916 Proclamation, so by nature it’s a version 'just for now' given the times that we are in.”
Watch the video and read the lyrics below, and let us know what you think in the comment section.
Lyrics:
We declare our right
to ownership of this land
to be sovereign
and indefeasible.
Nothing has extinguished that right
nor can it be extinguished
except by
the destruction of the people
We were promised civil liberty
equal rights and equal opportunity
All lies galore, all we ever got was war
Now we chant for a new country
And we place our cause
before The Most High God
whose blessings
we invoke upon our hearts
In this supreme hour
let us by our valor
prove worthy
of our august destiny
We were promised civil liberty
equal rights and equal opportunity
All lies galore, all we ever got was war.
Now we chant for a new country.
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